Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

TO students of Taipei's Kungkuan Elementary School, a "wetland" on their campus had been their pride and joy for almost three decades.

However, the supposed urban rarity was recently found to be nothing more than the result of a leaking water pipe.

The discovery comes after the school received eight million Taiwan dollars ($300,000) from education authorities to turn the "wetland" into an "ecology park" or a habitat to house butterflies and insects, the evening China Times Express reported Thursday.

The embarrassment surfaced after water authorities, acting on a report by a nearby resident, checked the school's water pipes and found the leak last month, the paper said. Since then, the "wetland fountain" has stopped gushing....